Setting a High Bar for Your Customer Service

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2020

⏱️ 24 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Horst Schulze, cofounder of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, started out cleaning ashtrays as a busboy before working his way up through some of the world's best hotels and becoming COO of Ritz-Carlton and later CEO of Capella Hotel Group. He shares the principles of stellar customer service to which he credits his success — and explains how they apply to every business. Schulze is the author of the book "Excellence Wins: A No-Nonsense Guide to Becoming the Best in a World of Compromise.”

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you work with early career professionals, my colleagues at
0:03.8	HPR have a great new podcast for you. It's called New Here. Think of it like the
0:08.4	Young Professional's Guide to Building a Meaningful Career on your own terms.
0:11.9	Share New Here with the Young Professionals in your life. a meaningful career on your own terms.
0:12.8	Share new here with the young professionals in your life.
0:15.9	Listen for free wherever you got your podcasts.
0:18.6	Just search new here. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. There's something you can see in all kinds of retail stores and airports and
0:49.3	hotels that our guests today wishes would just go away.
0:53.0	And that's the customer service desk.
0:55.0	You know what I'm talking about, the desk or stand with a sign above it,
0:59.0	where you often have to wait in line and then explain everything that happened to finally get something
1:04.1	taken care of.
1:05.9	Our guest believes that that desk sends the wrong message not just to customers but to employees,
1:12.3	that it's silently telling all the other workers they don't have to mess with problems or handle
1:17.0	complaints because customer service will take care of it. It's their job. Well our
1:22.2	guest believes strongly it's everyone's job and he should
1:25.4	know. Horse Schulz began his long career in the service industry as a hotel
1:30.5	restaurant bus boy and he worked his way up to eventually become co-founder
1:34.6	and CEO of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company and later CEO of the Capella Hotel Group.
1:40.0	Sholza credits his success to always chasing perfection and never accepting good enough.
1:46.0	And he says the principles of excellent customer service don't just apply to luxury hotels.
1:52.0	They can lead to success in every business.
	...

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